Ouch what a mess. Any good advice?

[forlines78]

Okay so Ihad to make a sudden move in the middle of refining and had to quickly neutralize my regia, having only sodium hydroxide, I'm left with a sludge that filters out a gold sludge and clear greenish liquid . the sludge is way more than the gold i dissolved. can and how do i get the gold out? Any advice or instructions would be great.. i tried rinsing some sludge but was eventually disappointed with everything eventually dilluting through the filter. of course i only filtered maybe w tenth of the stuff n stopped.

 

[jimdoc]

What did you start with?

Jim

 

[solar_plasma]

The base metals have formed solid hydroxides. Some of them (Cu for sure) are solvable with more NaOH. Probably they would dissolve again in a acidic level, too. I would take a small amount and try both possibilities, - at first to make it acidic again with HCl.

....if you have the experience to do that. I have just seen, you are new to the forum,so if you are not experienced, don't do anything until the real masters of the forum have given you their advices!

 

[butcher]

I suspect you are best off, just leaving the powders the way they are fo now, until you have read Hoke's book and done some more study on the forum.

The reason I say this is, because if you do not know what to do at this point, you have not learned enough yet to be trying anything else, how long have you been successfully refining gold?

At this point it sounds like you have a solution of base metals NaCl and NaNO3, and possibly some gold mixed in with base metal hydroxide salts, the solution is probably not neutral, could still be somewhat acidic or caustic, unless you have tested and the test shows pH 7, you have a colored solution, with base metals coloring your solution green, which also leads me to believe you did not remove base metals from solution before dissolving your gold, which also makes me wonder how you know you had gold in solution before you added NaOH?.

You really have not told us what you have done up to this point, we do not know what materials you had or what treatments you have done up to this question, you say you had to make a sudden move in the middle of refining, and added sodium hydroxide to aqua regia, you mention a color that indicates base metals were, and still are in solution, if you were using aqua regia, you should not have a green color, normally gold in aqua regia is yellow unless you have base metal in solution.

 

[Lino1406]

1. Discard the liquid
2. Start the process again with aqua regia on the solid
Lino1406 author "29 recovery procedures..."

 

[butcher]

I just have a different opinion on this question than Lino.

I say treat you liquid for waste, see the safety section (dealing with waste), dry the powders, save them in a safe place.

Then begin reading Hokes book.

This being your first post, and you asking this question, I suspect if you redissolved this mess in Aqua Regia again, you would just be making another mess to ask more questions about.

I could be wrong.

 

[srlaulis]

I'm with Butcher. Based on your comments, forlines78, it appears that you don't know what you are doing. Keeping safety of yourself and others as the main goal, I would download "Refining Precious Metal Wastes", by C.M. Hoke, and read it. You can use the search box on this forum to search for a free download of it.

Steven

 

[forlines78]

Apologies for the late response. so far I've refined five batches from start to finish the first two i made tthe nitric acid myself the latter of the two having no source of nitrates, actually got some from road flares n it worked. so i did not want to dump hydrox but i couldn't very well toss it in the bike trailer and pull it two miles. so i was using pins and nothing but. i ran out of nitric and was informed that there wasn't enough time to make or order more so knowing better i filtered and used a little of the dirty nitric for the regia. Shortly after i had to neutralize apparently someone's move date got confused so i dumped hydrox and the green went murky but bright yellow. so i filtered and got two full and half another full of this bright but vivid yelllow stuff that somehow turns the filter a blue green. the rest stays yellow. i rinsed this stuff by dumling in water and it comes out colors brown and black black being at bottom but with a little more water it all readily passes thru filter n I'm left with what i started with lol. first time i haven't succeeded.

 

[squarecoinman]

Apologies for the late response. so far I've refined five batches from start to finish the first two i made tthe nitric acid myself the latter of the two having no source of nitrates, actually got some from road flares n it worked. so i did not want to dump hydrox but i couldn't very well toss it in the bike trailer and pull it two miles. so i was using pins and nothing but. i ran out of nitric and was informed that there wasn't enough time to make or order more so knowing better i filtered and used a little of the dirty nitric for the regia. Shortly after i had to neutralize apparently someone's move date got confused so i dumped hydrox and the green went murky but bright yellow. so i filtered and got two full and half another full of this bright but vivid yelllow stuff that somehow turns the filter a blue green. the rest stays yellow. i rinsed this stuff by dumling in water and it comes out colors brown and black black being at bottom but with a little more water it all readily passes thru filter n I'm left with what i started with lol. first time i haven't succeeded.

I am not sure if I Understand you, It may be my lack of knowledge , but let me tell you what I think I understand
You have until now been lucky 4 times and you made a mess the last time.
The first 2 times you did bother to get real nitric acid, the next 2 times you used road flares as your source of nitric and the last time you used your waste from AR that you made the first 4 times. If you read Hoke you will know that gold will drop down with among others SMB , when the nitric is gone , so I believe you did not study what you are doing. Start with reading Hoke you will then understand that you should not use your waste as a source of nitric acid.
The second thing I may not fully understand is how you can come in a situation where you are not in control of your process and feel the need to dump in "hydrox" in your AR. Obvious you did not read very much about safety.

When processing gold or any other metal, It would be a very good idea to have read up on the process you are going to work with, to have all the material you need, including safety equipment.

The best thing you can do now is read Hoke, read up on safety , store your mess for a long time until you know what you are doing. Search the forum and try to find some of the subject where people ended in the hospital because they did not think about safety.

scm

 

[forlines78]

No no. what i said was i have refines gold four out of five seperate times. twice usinng nitric acid i made two seperate instances. once with nitric i got from roadflarez and once and this time which both selerate instances. this last time and before were times i bought the nitric. now i had to move my lidomicile to an area two miles away and the only option was haydroxide seeing as it had to be put in a pullcart on a bicycle . so eithher way its not important all of this the question was essentially how difficult is it going to be to retrieve the gold and can i get a little advice. I'm a hands on learner and really have no time currently to read but will in the future if i can secure my new place. with money. from this crap i have. please.

 

[squarecoinman]

No no. what i said was i have refines gold four out of five seperate times. twice usinng nitric acid i made two seperate instances. once with nitric i got from roadflarez and once and this time which both selerate instances. this last time and before were times i bought the nitric. now i had to move my lidomicile to an area two miles away and the only option was haydroxide seeing as it had to be put in a pullcart on a bicycle . so eithher way its not important all of this the question was essentially how difficult is it going to be to retrieve the gold and can i get a little advice. I'm a hands on learner and really have no time currently to read but will in the future if i can secure my new place. with money. from this crap i have. please.

You seem to not have time to read, on safety and on the correct process to solve your mess.
As a member of this forum I can not and will not give help to people that disregard safety.
However this said, I will try to answer your questions anyway

In hokes book is a solution , I will not tell you the page , but I promise it is there. I did find it.
The process you will need is a slow process, but it will give you a change to get your gold back.
If you are a hands on learner you should find your self a teacher that is willing to teach.
If you are short of cash, it often pays better to sell stuff on ebay then to refine.
Refining is a kraft, that not can be learned in one afternoon, it will take many years and it is dangerous.

when discussing things on the forum it would be a good idea to use a spelling control, since we discus chemistry a lot, spelling mistakes can have serious consequences.

Lidomicile is a French brand of pajamas. Some members use google translate to read these text and trust me they will not understand your text if it is translated in to another language.


I hope you can solve your domestic situation, and that you will find the knowledge to understand that reading and study is the way to go and being in a hurry is not wise

one question for you , what did you start with ( what kind of material , how much , how much acid etc etc )

scm

 

[solar_plasma]

first time i haven't succeeded.

...and it will not be the last time, if you do not listen to butcher et al.

 

[forlines78]

So i used approx one lb of pins and obout half that in pins from boards, again, so one and a half lbs total filtered after nitric. acid and added aluminum rod to nitric until the top was clear and drew off the top 25 ml of liquid. added 75ml hydrochloric oh and when i say clear it had very slight blue tint but clear as water. that mix when gold was added turned green but when hydroxide was added i just poured very slowly and stirred while doing so until the mix went yellow and opaque.

 

[forlines78]

And please excuse some minor misspelled words i am using a sort of idk best described as handicapped smart phone.i get frustrated with it so much thatt after multiple oops corrections i just say eh, put it on the doggie run and let him go a while....

 

[butcher]

forlines78,
I have been learning this for years now, and I am still learning, recovery and refining takes a lot of understanding, and it also takes an awful lot of studying, and hard work, everyone is a hands on learner, but without studying, you would not learn it even if you watch me do it, because without study you would not understand what I was doing and why, you would not understand the decisions made during a process, or why the decisions were made, even if we taught you a process and you learned to follow it like monkey see monkey do, what would the monkey do if things went foul or some variable in the process changed the chemistry, that monkey would not have any knowledge of how to correct the problem, or even have an understanding of how not to get into the problem in the first place, or understand how to recover his gold from that mess.

If you do not have time or the inclination to study, then you just might as well just forget about learning to recover and refine gold, it just will not happen without the work needed to learn, because you will not learn any other way, you cannot learn by watching a couple of videos, or reading a few pages on the internet, it takes years of study and hard work, and years of hands on practice of what you are studying and learning.

I can show you how to cut the heart out of a rabbit, but unless you worked hard and studied medicine you will not become a heart surgeon.


if you wish to learn you will have to do your homework, nobody can just transfer data from their brain to yours, you have to collect that data into your brain the old fashion way.

Hokes book is an easy book to read, it is free here on the forum, this book alone and knowing the information in it is worth much more gold than you have probably ever seen in your life. It boggles my mind when someone worries about getting a few grams of gold from some mess they have made and refuse to gain the values and treasures that this book holds, secrets that many would have killed to get, secrets kept from kings, secrets that could take a man from living in poverty to being able to recover and refine the most valuable metals in the world, where he could live a better life.

I would like to help you, but before I can you will have to help yourself, to do that you will have to stop fooling around doing things you have no clue as to what you are doing, and where you are coming very close to harming yourself or others seriously, stop fooling around and get serious, READ HOKE'S.